Last Thursday, October 27, Elon Musk completed the purchase of the social network for 44,000 million dollars. After the news, users began to express their concern in the company itself about the level of control or freedoms that would be lost under the new management, starting to create new accounts on other platforms, such as Mastodon y Discord.
In accordance with Wiredonly between October 20 and 27, some 18,000 people signed up for this social networkand as of October 28, there were 381,113 users, according to Eugen Rochko, general director of the platform.
The movement began to gather steam just hours after news of the acquisition broke, trending on Twitter with #TwitterMigration, in anticipation that radical changes were made in the new social network de Musk.
According to Mastodon herself, the name of her platform began to trend as more users created new accounts and advertised them on Twitter so that their followers could also find them on their new sites.
For anyone wondering, Mastodon got over 70K sign-ups yesterday alone. Let’s keep the momentum going! The “public square” of the web must not belong to any one person or corporation!
— Mastodon (@joinmastodon) October 30, 2022
According to Mastodon, this resulted in the fact that only on Friday, October 28, more than 70,000 new accounts were registeredwhich resulted in an overload to the servers for “the extreme peak of users.
The arguments for deciding to leave Twitter
The reasons to decide to change are varied, y Wired collects the arguments of different users. For example, in the case of Cassie LaBelle, a writer who is part of the transgender community on Twitter, she wrote at the time that “did not know if Musk would buy and destroy the platform“.
I’M GOING TO TRY RUNNING A DISCORD SERVER!
I don’t know if Musk is gonna buy & destroy Twitter or not, or whether the server will be cool or just kinda fail to be anything, but if you’re interested – DM me for the link!
— Cassie, Freelance Transfiguration Specialist (@CassieCeleste) October 22, 2022
For this, he started his own Discord server, which despite not being the same, would allow him to “take with him” the entire community to have a backup space that feels safeespecially because of the risk they present moderation ruleswhich can become a problem for marginalized groups.
Another case is that of academic and technological communities, which are also publishing their Mastodon profiles in their Twitter bios or names.
Looks like #Mastodon is trending on Twitter as more and more people are announcing their new profiles. Welcome to the better social media that does not belong to a single company and cannot be sold, welcome to the fediverse! pic.twitter.com/75pugCA0si
— Mastodon (@joinmastodon) October 27, 2022
There is also the situation of companies, such as Danny Groner, director of marketing at the venture group Forecast Labs, that use the platform to connect with people in a professional way. Even though he’s not going to leave her right now, he’s got it covered. if the social network changes and affects the presentation of inappropriate content, where Mastodon works as a contingency plan if trolls and stalkers increase on Twitter.
There are some that are even more extreme, like with Matt Haughey, who was planning to leave Twitter at the time the deal was made. for the acquisition of the platform will be completedwell “does not trust“In Musk’s judgment, he doesn’t even want to be part of a company he owns.
However, perhaps the most notorious case of all It’s Nibel’s (@Nibellion), a journalist specializing in video game news, who also announced that he would leave the platformfor financial support, but also for the concerns on Musk’s leadership.
Image: Mastodon